I took 5 rolls of film in our 62 hour, 2650 mile trip. I've narrowed this down to MINI related, because you know how one-dimensional MINI owners are :)

Jay and MINI and I left Sunday, October 13th (2002) for a leisurely ride up to Hudson's Bay, in Canada. It's that huge body of water on the map atop eastern Canada, attached to the Arctic Ocean. I've always wanted to see the Bay, and was crushed to find out the road ends about 100 kms south of there, at James Bay. (Click on that pic. Its very neat!) But, fear not, having just gotten my MINI broken in I decided to do the next best thing, short of flying in a Piper, or renting a dog sled team: we were going to drive to the end of the northern-most paved road still attached to civilization in eastern North America. The road goes to a Cree Indian village called Chisasibi.

The village used to be on an island called Le Grande Riviere. In the 1970's, the Canadian governement convinced all but three families they would be under water when the hydro plants were built (hence, you now know the purpose of the road up there), and moved them all inland about 10 km. I think they bought them all houses and pickup trucks too but even so, we saw tee-pee frames everywhere.

I don't know if MINI, or the signage on MINI, drew more attention. Most people along the way don't speak English, and even fewer had any clue where Hudson's Bay is.

No trip is complete without driving through some sort of rush-hour. We hit it in 6 hours in, and made it all the way to Montreal before hitting some.

Everywhere was gas with service. Living in New York, need I say we loved it? This is about 3am in Matagami. He even checked the oil, even though he didn't know how to read MINI's dip stick.

I loved this one, and actually had to drive in reverse 1/10th mile to get the shot (like I was going to hit anyone...) We are at 50 degrees, 0 minutes, 0 seconds North.

Jay is really into Bonsai, and found great stuff all over the place. I just thought you would all like to see my stretch MINI. You can also see it was SO bright I had to shoot totally stopped down (f/22), causing massive vignetting in this picture. Voigtlander 15mm on Leica M7.

This is near the start of the James Bay Road. 600 kms with one outpost of civilization at km marker 381. Want to know what DARK is?

When you are done looking at MINI, look at the tops of the conifers. They looked like 50' tall cat-tails

A shot only a MINI owner could make. (Do not try this at home. It will not work with other brands of sunroofs.) I just parked on the bridge and shot straight up. 15mm Voigtlander lens on a Leica M7. No other cars in sight.

This place is called Rupert Falls. HUGE, and incredibly loud, even though we were about 1/2 mile away.

The symbolic end of the road. The paved road ends several kilometers from the power plant at Radisson. A different road goes to Chisasibi, which is the far-north end. I just liked the picture...

Just like school days. I think we could have gotten another 10 people in MINI, surely paving the way to the Guiness Book of Records.Notice the coats? I made poor Jay drive with the window down most of the way. It was nippy cold, just my type of weather!

This really is MINI at the end of the world. About 30 feet to the left in the pic the paved road ends. About 100' to the right is the Le Grande Riviere, at a point perhaps 1/2 mile or so from James Bay. The end of the road.

This was such a difference from from my last experience in Quebec. The Cree were very friendly.

Ok, nothing to do with MINI, but if you've made it this far, you will probably want to see this. She is standing on the steps of the company restaurant. It's the only place to get gas, hot food, or even a cup of coffee for almost 250 miles, in either direction. We stopped there. Twice.

Yeah, yeah, more scenery. Wait 'til I break out the pics from the Caribbean Islands. Anyway, this is the SMALLER of several plants up there. It is 1,200 megawatts. HUGE.

So, if you are down this far on the page, do you want to come on the next MINI trip?

Back to MINI. Our baby, parked outside the gate to the plant. This pic will give you a sense of the scale of the place. Also, I noticed workers just drove by, not even questioning what we might be doing there. So different from Ridge's vision of America (and no, Mr. Secretary, we did not have any box cutters with us.)

On the way back, looking west at the sunset over the Painted Hills and Old Factory Lakes region. Gorgeous views, and very indicitive of the sub-arctic area.

Entering the US, I wanted to show the government they weren't the only ones who could take pictures. As we were being 'grilled' by the guard (Yes, sight-seeing. Yes, shopping. What? Oh, we tried to buy Canadian Tire out of muck-boots and chrome plated shovels.) another guard ran out of the building and started to ask loads of questions about our car. He'd never seen one, and loved it!

This, and the last pic, are really in reverse order. This is crossing at the Canadian border (which conviently enough for Canada just happened to have a toll booth at it...) We pulled up, i jumped out of the car and totally freaked out the guard. She must have been 20, if, and looked at me like a deer in head lights. Didn't seem strange to me. How else was I to get a picture of MINI coming across the border?